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| By Maggie Ma |
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 here is a big secret you’d never guess: God is an animation artist. From the first day to the fifth day, he drew on a huge palette – light and shadow, heaven and earth, bird and beast, sun and star. On the sixth day, he created human beings. And as the Bible tells us, on the seventh day God rested. But in fact, God did not rest because he was busy making things move, or bringing them to life. He made the trees grow, flowers bloom, birds fly and deer run.
But God isn’t alone. There are others who can now bring characters to life, and they might be artists too. They’re called animators or the makers of cartoons. And when they work on the internet, they are called “flashers,” or flash animators.
It all began in 1998, when Macromedia Inc., an American software company, produced a multi-media animation maker: Macromedia Flash. Flash stands for interactive animation design, connecting music and voice with images to produce high-quality dynamic effects. In another words: animation. The powerful programming language brings pictures to life, so a whole animated feature can completed by one person with one computer.
 And you might say these “flashers” are artists, in a way, because the flasher must write, play and direct on his own. After several weeks or a few months of work, he can finish a short flash animated film and upload it to the internet to be viewed for free. Many outstanding flash animation pieces have become popular on the internet, often spreading by word of mouth, or through emails. The code names or id of the flashers often also become popular on the internet.
Compared with traditional animation, flash animation is a newborn baby. The traditional animator’s work is arduous. For a 10-minute animation, he usually has to draw thousands of pictures. “The Lion King,” a film which won two Oscars in 1995 and fetched a $750 million, was produced using a 500 to 600 people from Walt Disney Pictures, working hard for several years.
So if you are eager to be a God, flash might help you fulfill your dream. But there is one precondition: you must have to learn how to draw.
Most flashers have a background in fine arts. And their outstanding works are mixed with music, art and video. But it doesn’t mean the traditional art world is easy to accept this strange vanguard. However, if a short film on DVD can be called an artwork of video art, why can’t flash animation become a work of “flash art”?
The problem is, flashers are not yet regarded as artists because they rarely accept interviews, rarely appear at parties and they have no curators or collectors. Sometimes, you might not even know the real identity of the person who created the flash animation. Maybe flashers never dream of being a so-called artist either. They seem to prefer hiding behind the internet and living in a world made by themselves.
 Let me tell you something about “Doupi,” a female flasher. But it’s not exactly what is sounds like. No one knows how old she is or where she works at, because she never accepts interviews, and never talks about herself. She announced on the internet that she only makes flash for her own interest. For example, her well-known flash work, “Xi Liang Xian Fu” series, makes use of classical elements: she employs characters of traditional Chinese theatre, backgrounds in ink wash, and she dubs music that is a mix of Chinese Opera and modern music. The voice in the flashes she creates are from Doupi herself. Her long monologue with a Zen flavor has attracted huge audiences on the internet.
Another flasher, “Lin℃,” is a 27-year-old man who was born in Shanghai. He now lives in Beijing. His work, “Yellow,” is a flash based on a British rock band Coldplay’s original work. In his story, a girl and a boy have an encounter in a car, and the lovely girl tells the cool boy how to enjoy his life. After this work was posted at www.flash8.net in 2002, over 600,000 people downloaded it. When Lin℃ was asked why he made this work, he only said that the song was wonderful.
 And then there’s a flasher code-named “Puhua,” who is 28 and was born in Beijing. Her father is a famous print artist. After graduating from Central Institute of Arts and Crafts, she went to Holland for advanced study of oil painting. Considering her education background, she may be the flasher who gets closest to art. She probably would never have imagined that what would make her famous is flash, not the paintbrush. But her work, “The Sick City,” appeared at the Chinese Unit of Les Nuits Magiques - Festival International du Film d'Animation in France. In the piece, two little ants offer a difficult love story.
It seems that flashers are lucky enough to find their own way of expressing themselves, and playing God. So who cares whether they’re considered artists or not?
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